Notes and Essays -- John Brown

Lonely Zelensky at home and in the International arenas. Photo credit. The Guardian As Russian forces intensify their offensive operations across eastern and southern Ukraine, Kyiv is facing mounting pressure not only from Moscow, but increasingly from its own Western partners. A new round of high-level diplomacy, led by senior advisers close to U.S. President Donald Trump, underscores a shifting dynamic in which Ukraine is being pressed to accommodate political realities shaped by force Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two figures central to Trump’s foreign-policy approach, are expected to meet again with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to advance a U.S.-brokered framework aimed at halting the war. European leaders from Germany, France, and Britain are also expected to participate, lending the talks international legitimacy — and, crucially, reinforcing the pressure on Kyiv to engage on Washington’s terms. At the core of the discussions lies the most contentious is...

Russian Invasion of Ukraine 2022   ·  Follow Posted by  Yohanan Ben Jacob   Dec 13 Ukraine Under Intensifying Western Immense Pressure as Russia Advances on the Battlefield Lonely Zelensky at home and in the International arenas. Photo credit. The Guardian As Russian forces intensify their offensive operations across eastern and southern Ukraine, Kyiv is facing mounting pressure not only from Moscow, but increasingly from its own Western partners. A new round of high-level diplomacy, led by senior advisers close to U.S. President Donald Trump , underscores a shifting dynamic in which Ukraine is being pressed to accommodate political realities shaped by force. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner , two figures central to Trump’s foreign-policy approach, are expected to meet again with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to advance a U.S.-brokered framework aimed at halting the war. European leaders from Germany, France, and Britain are also expected ...

War Notes by Francis Farrell, Friday 13, From The Kyiv Independent Dear War Notes readers, This is Asami Terajima writing this week’s edition of War Notes from my desk at our Kyiv office. It has still been very cold in Kyiv, but today is much warmer than the past few days, and maybe spring is not so far away. I came home one night this week after dinner and saw an unsheltered man on the stairs of my apartment building. I felt very bad because it was extremely cold outside, and it seemed like he was struggling to even move, and all he could do was sit in silence, staring at the wall. I brought him some food and warm tea, and I hope that made his day better. We had  a missile and drone attack  on Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, Feb. 12. Local authorities reported damage in residential areas, and two people were injured. I was on attack coverage duty that day, so I headed out to one of the attack sites, where several apartment buildings were damaged, and windows had been blo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visionary#:~:text=The%20painting%20has%20been%20described,after%20Cowan%20repainted%20the%20hand The Visionary The Entrepreneur Artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan Year 1989

Opinion George F. Will Crippled by his Ukraine misadventure, Vladimir Putin is surely defining success down. February 13, 2026 at 7:00 a.m. EST Today at 7:00 a.m. EST The Washington Post, 2/13/26 In Ukraine's Donetsk region contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces, on Aug. 14, 2025. (Ed Ram/For The Washington Post) “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” —  George Orwell, “1984” When the  105-day war  ended, almost  400,000 Soviet soldiers  had been killed or wounded or were missing. The Kremlin reported minor losses. Vladimir Putin, a Stalin admirer, should have studied the actual past that Stalin falsified.  Stalin began the  Winter War , a.k.a. the Russo-Finnish War, on Nov. 30, 1939, as his then-ally Adolf Hitler had begun World War II in Europe three months earlier: by staging a fraudulent border incident. Stalin, dictator of a  nation of 170 million , expected to quickly subdue Finland, a nat...